


Rocks Fall; Nobody Dies

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Category: Shadow Unit
Genre: (except Daphne; sorry Daphne), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, Memories, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 22:38:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16147025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: Probability is malleable, and in the course of events, fortune becomes exploitable. But, what if time is, as well?





	Rocks Fall; Nobody Dies

_I met myself, the other day_ , he thought, and it wasn’t the way he’d mean it in some time yet to come, but in the most entirely literal fashion. He’d met himself. He’d seen his own face staring back at him, looking the wrong way through his eyes, a glitch, another glitch. And the first time, he’d lost them all.

It had taken him years of study, years of watching entire lives slide over him, through him, before he’d found her. He’d known she’d be there, somewhere. He’d known she had to exist, and the revelation was a matter of Time, and nothing more. He’d found her, and he’d pushed her. Swept her right over the edge with him, until they could do what _he_ needed done.

Five tries. He’d relived that same scene over and over, saving one, losing another. Losing them all, and that was so much worse than anything else. Again, again, again, again, one more time, and he could feel the way he burned with it, the smell of acetone and honey as he threw himself against the Beast, against the Bug, against his own bloodiest failure.

He’d thought they wouldn’t remember, after. She and he; the others would never know. It would never have happened for them. He'd thought they wouldn't remember, he and she, that it would really be gone. That they’d go back to who they’d been before they met, and that he’d never know her, she’d never remember him, that they could be people, again, instead of the monsters they’d become. Fourteen shots -- he started from the doorway, the last time, but the count was always the same; the less you changed, the less you paid -- and he could still remember everything.

They’d almost lost him, and he lost her -- lost her, not _lost_ her. Somewhere in the future, in a future they’d never see, she was… somewhere else, someone else, someone who’d been here five times and watched it all fall apart again and again, until he got it right. Someone who had seen everything he was, even as he knew her, became her, used her. But he thought she’d lived. They’d prepared for failure, for having to come back, for having to try again later. She'd be able to save herself. She was still out there, somewhere, he thought. And he hoped she had the sense and the will to keep her head down, or he _would_ find her again, and he hoped they'd never need to meet.

But, he’d come back here. Not earlier. He’d come back too late, and they were still one short. And he hoped no one would ever learn what he had done, or how he’d failed them even in making things ‘right’. One loss was still too many, but it was far less than it had been.

 _I met myself, the other day_ , he thought, _and then I threw that sonofabitch out and took his place._

**Author's Note:**

> This is barely long enough to be a fic, and I know it, but it's the root of some post-series fuckery I'm about to commit, involving a cameo in a [crossover series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1058681). I just needed Duke and Hafs not to be dead, and exploiting the shit out of Chaz and some unknown beta-now-gamma seemed like the friendliest way of getting there. This is mostly a way for me to have something to point back to, when the inevitable questions occur.
> 
> I feel like I should probably apologise for this in some way, so assume that's what this note is for: an apology for a timeline in which rocks fall, Chaz almost dies, and everyone but Daphne walks away. ( ~~Sorry, Daphne, your death's in the wrong episode.~~ )


End file.
